Upscaling old wallpapers for modern displays

[Melooon]

I found this great wallpaper pack that includes every wallpaper used from Windows 3.0 to 11  - A direct download is here on MEGA

Anyway, the issue is that most older wallpapers are too low resolution for modern screens - particularly 4k+ screens!

So I set about trying to upscale one and decided you might enjoy seeing the results:

• Original Windows Vista Wallpaper (1920x1200)
• Upscale using Affinity Photo and the Lanczos 3 algorithm (3840x2400)
• Upscale using an online "AI" tool Pixelcut (3840x2400)
• Upscale using an online "AI" tool "imgupscaler.com" (4000x2500)

I think 3 and 4 are probably the best looking to my eyes - 4 is the most AI-ish looking one and it looses a lot of detail and adds some weird sharpness, but its also the smoothest and least upscaled looking of the bunch.

Im curious to know what ones you like and if you have any tips to upscaling older wallpapers, or are you ok with a low-res wallpaper look?

[petrichoran]

oh that's awesome! vista definitely deserves more love and attention!

i think the third one is my favorite of the upscaled versions! i don't mind a lower quality image, because that's part of the charm in using an old windows wallpaper in the first place for me. but if there is a better quality image available, i'd definitely consider it!

i might change my wallpaper to this on one of my computers! right now, both my main computer and my little school laptop both have more recent pictures of the xp hill as their wallpaper. they're still two different images, but it might be fun to give them more distinction.